The Safe Driver

Ways on how you can avoid accidents caused by auto defects

**A contributed post as written for The Safe Driver by Timothy Garret.

After taking out an auto loan, test driving the car you bought in some dealership and signing all the required paperwork, you’re now ready to give your car out its first real taste of the road. But your car hadn’t even lasted a full week with you yet when it suddenly broke down and crashed into a utility pole, some homeowner’s picket fence, or even an approaching vehicle. The accident wasn’t your fault at all though. Rather, a defective part of your car caused it. When you’ve already bought yourself a car, you’d want to read these ways on how you can avoid accidents caused by auto defects so that you won’t get caught in one:

1. If you’ve found a defective part in your car and you didn’t cause its damage at all, you can file a vehicle safety complaint.

The term “safety recall” is often thrown around whenever auto defects are mentioned. But a safety recall only occurs after someone had reported an auto defect by filing a vehicle safety complaint.

• When you feel that something’s wrong with your car and you’re in Canada, you can either fill up Transport Canada’s Defect Complaint Form or give them a call. Their Defect Investigations and Recalls Division will look into your complaint.
• You’ll have to prove though that you didn’t inflict any damage to your car yourself. Otherwise, your complaint may get dismissed.

1. Read, listen to, or watch the news for any safety recalls issued to certain brands and models of cars.

Car manufacturers are usually quick to announce via print, television, radio, or the Internet if certain models of cars that they’ve put out in the past were found to have defective parts as their reputation is on the line.

• Thus, you should constantly be on the lookout for any news item that may involve your car. It’s better than driving what could, in fact, be a death trap.
• Even if you haven’t filed a vehicle safety complaint to the government agency responsible for investigating auto defects and yet you found out via the news that a safety recall got issued on your car, you can send it to an authorized service center or repair shop.

1. Ensure that the authorized service center or repair shop where you’ll send your car is fully equipped to fix it.

Sometimes though, news outlets get wind of a safety recall issued to your car before its manufacturer can even learn about it and send you a notice via snail mail. As a result, the service center or repair shop authorized to fix your car might not have prepared themselves for it as well.

• If you send your car to an authorized service center or repair shop and it isn’t equipped yet with the right tools to do the corresponding fix, you’ll be without a car for what could turn out to be months.
• Since car manufacturers are required to register the vehicle identification number – or VIN – of each unit that got affected by a safety recall, you can check first with the service center or repair shop authorized to fix your car if its manufacturer registered its VIN as part of a safety recall.

1. Regardless if your car’s manufacturer is willing to repair it for free, replace it with a similar model, or give a certain amount of your money back, ask for a recall remedy.

A safety recall issued to your car affects not only you but potentially thousands of people all over the world who own the same car as you do. Nonetheless, you should insist on having a recall remedy made to your car as you have the legal right to do so.

• You don’t have to pay for anything once the manufacturer of your car provides you with a recall remedy.
• If the defect found in your car is very minor, its manufacturer can repair it.
• The manufacturer of your defective car may also convince you to take home a replacement car that’s the same model. However, you should ensure that the replacement unit doesn’t have any manufacturing defects so that you won’t have to get inconvenienced yet again once a safety recall gets issued on it.
• Lastly, you can get a portion of the total sale amount of your defective car with depreciation costs factored in the refund, though this only applies to safety recalls of entire cars and not if a certain car part put out by a different manufacturer was reported as defective.

CBC News reported that five million vehicles bought in Canadian soil were issued with safety recalls last 2015, most of them being cars. Yet some of those cars are still on the road waiting to break down anytime. But that’s because their owners aren’t aware that their car has a defective part, only finding out about it when it’s already too late. If you’ve bought yourself a car, you should take note of the above-listed ways on how you can avoid accidents caused by auto defects so that your driving experience wouldn’t end with you taking a trip to the hospital and seeking help from a lawyer about your compensation claim.

If you’d like to make the most out of your right of compensation for your personal injuries caused by auto defects, you can click here for more legal options.

Timothy Garret

Timothy is a budding legal writer who enjoys all aspect of the law industry. He’s currently studying to become a lawyer  and is applying his law knowledge into what he writes. He spends time with his friends and swimming in his spare time.